A review of De Kooning: An American Master by Mark Stevens

A review of De Kooning: An American Master, by Mark Stevens & Annalyn Swan.

Share

Its not news that the New York Abstract Expressionists were an anxiety-ridden, hard-drinking group of cantankerous guys, passionate about art and (for the most part) brutal to women. The rhetoric attached to this generation reinforces these notions; the literature is rife with such terms as breakthrough and arena for action, and a major study of the period is titled The Triumph of American Painting. Yet research reveals that much of the lore of cold-water Tenth Street studios and argumentative artists gatherings at the Cedar Bar and The Club is essentially true, even though the reality of this near-mythical era proves, not surprisingly, to be more interesting, more complicated, less glamorous, and also less squalid than legend holds. The most recent examination of these heady years is Mark...

A Message from the Editors

Your support is vital to our future.

Our past successes are owed to our greatest ambassadors: our readers. Our future rests on your support, as The New Criterion Editor Roger Kimball explains. Will you help us continue to bring our incisive review of the arts and culture to the next generation of readers?